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Berlin/Sankt Augustin, 27th August 2014 – Over the next two years, the EU funding pogramme "EuropeanPioneers" will support 25 startups and SMEs in the European Union with a total of 4.5 million Euros. The scheme targets businesses active in the fields of Smart City Services, Social Connected TV, Pervasive Gaming and E-Learning....

Thousands of fishing traps are lost or abandoned each year in U.S. waters and become what are known as derelict traps, which continue to catch fish, crabs, and other species such as turtles. These traps result in losses to habitat, fisheries, and the watermen who depend on the resources--losses that are largely preventable, according to a newly published NOAA study....

Gamblers are greedy bird-brains, University of Warwick research finds. Gamblers show the same tendencies as pigeons when they make risky decisions, new research has shown. Researchers, led by Dr Elliot Ludvig of the University of Warwick's Department of Psychology, conducted tests that found that both human gamblers and pigeons were 35% more likely to gamble for high-value than low-value rewards....

Case Western Reserve University astronomer Chris Mihos leads a team of Ohio researchers recently awarded nearly 20 hours of observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope to study the outskirts of the nearby spiral galaxy M101. Access to Hubble is extremely competitive, with only about one in five proposals being awarded observing time and research funding....

The field of astrophysics has a stubborn problem and it's called lithium. The quantities of lithium predicted to have resulted from the Big Bang are not actually present in stars. But the calculations are correct – a fact which has now been confirmed for the first time in experiments conducted at the underground laboratory in the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy....

There is an urgent need for medical agents to treat metastatic tumors. In case of pancreatic cancer, one of the most aggressive types of cancer that is often detected late, 95% of the patients die within five years after the diagnosis. The KIT spinoff amcure develops tumor therapeutic agents that might reduce this mortality rate....

One of nature's mysteries is how plants survive impact by the huge amounts of energy contained in the sun's rays, while using this energy for photosynthesis. The hypothesis is that the light-absorbing proteins in the plant's blades quickly dissipate the energy throughout the entire protein molecule through so-called protein quakes....

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second leading cause of cancer-associated death worldwide. These regrettably poor prognoses are due to the difficulty in treating this cancer using conventional chemotherapeutic drugs such as doxorubicin, epirubicin, cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil, etoposide or combinations therein....

Boron deficiency is one of the most widespread causes of reduced crop yield. Missouri and the eastern half of the United States are plagued by boron deficient soil and, often, corn and soybean farmers are required to supplement their soil with boron; however, little is known about the ways in which corn plants utilize the essential nutrient....

By combining plasmonics and optical microresonators, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a new optical amplifier (or laser) design, paving the way for power-on-a-chip applications. "We have made optical systems at the microscopic scale that amplify light and produce ultra-narrowband spectral output," explained J. Gary Eden, a professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at Illinois....

A new argument has just been added to the growing case for graphene being bumped off its pedestal as the next big thing in the high-tech world by the two-dimensional semiconductors known as MX2 materials. An international collaboration of researchers led by a scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)....

Continuous positive airway pressure is effective at treating sleep apnoea in older people, a new study has found. Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a condition where the walls of the throat relax and narrow during sleep, interrupting normal breathing and causing profound sleepiness....

In recent years, increasing pressure from policymakers, consumers, and suppliers has prompted manufacturers to set environmental targets that go beyond reducing the pollutants they emit from their smokestacks or discharge into rivers and lakes....

Massive Hurricane Marie appears like a giant fish about to swallow tiny Tropical Depression Karina on satellite imagery today from NOAA's GOES-West satellite. Karina, now a tropical depression is being swept into Marie's circulation where it is expected to be eaten, or absorbed....

The famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes used a magnifying lens to reveal barely visible but important evidence. Astronomers are now combining the power of many telescopes on Earth and in space [1] with a vastly larger form of lens to study a case of vigorous star formation in the early Universe....

To reduce and better treat spaceflight-induced visual impairment, University of Houston (UH) optometrists are collaborating on a NASA study that examines ocular changes seen in a number of astronauts. The research, developed by Heidelberg Engineering, uses Spectralis® Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), which is a technique for obtaining subsurface images of translucent or opaque materials....

Kit Lam and colleagues from UC Davis and other institutions have created dynamic nanoparticles (NPs) that could provide an arsenal of applications to diagnose and treat cancer. Built on an easy-to-make polymer, these particles can be used as contrast agents to light up tumors for MRI and PET scans or deliver chemo and other therapies to destroy tumors....

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed algorithms to identify weak spots in tendons, muscles and bones prone to tearing or breaking. The technology, which needs to be refined before it is used in patients, one day may help pinpoint minor strains and tiny injuries in the body's tissues long before bigger problems occur....

Like a protective tent over a colony of harmful bacteria, biofilms make the treatment of skin infections especially difficult. Microorganisms protected in a biofilm pose a significant health risk due to their antibiotic resistance and recalcitrance to treatment, and biofilm-protected bacteria account for some 80 percent of total bacterial infections in humans....

Scientists have developed what they believe is the thinnest-possible semiconductor, a new class of nanoscale materials made in sheets only three atoms thick. The University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that two of these single-layer semiconductor materials can be connected in an atomically seamless fashion known as a heterojunction....

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded two major grants to further expand and support a national network of public-private partnerships to transition fundamental science and engineering discoveries to the marketplace under the Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program....

By now, it should come as no surprise that networking is changing. The number of devices – not just PCs – connected to the Internet has exploded. According to the recently released Cisco Visual Networking Index, by 2018 devices will generate more network traffic than PCs....

Thomson Reuters, a leading source of information for businesses and professionals, has included five researchers at the University of California, Riverside in its 2014 list of "some of the best and brightest minds of our times." To generate the list, the company analyzed citation data over 11 years (2002-2012) to identify researchers whose published work has had enormous impact....

A team of engineers from Singapore has successfully piloted the world's first ZigBee wireless sensor network (WSN) for satellite communications. With the weight of payloads being a major constraint in satellite design, constructing a lightweight, low power-consuming ...